South Korea Table of Contents
Korea underwent drastic changes under Japanese rule. Even before the
country was formally annexed by Japan in 1910, the Japanese caused the
last ruling monarch, King Kojong, to abdicate the throne in 1907 in
favor of his feeble son, who was soon married off to a Japanese woman
and given a Japanese peerage. Japan then governed Korea under a
residency general and subsequently under a governor general directly
subordinate to Japanese prime ministers. All of the governor generals
were high-ranking Japanese military officers.
In theory the Koreans, as subjects of the Japanese emperor, enjoyed
the same status as the Japanese; but in fact the Japanese government
treated the Koreans as a conquered people. Until 1921 they were not
allowed to publish their own newspapers or to organize political or
intellectual groups.
Nationalist sentiments gave rise to a Korean student demonstration in
Japan, and on March 1, 1919, to a Proclamation of Independence by a
small group of leaders in Seoul. With the consolidation of what became
known as the March First Movement, street demonstrations led by
Christian and Ch'ondogyo (a movement that evolved from Tonghak) groups
erupted throughout the country to protest Japanese rule.
In the wake of the protest, Japan granted considerable latitude to
Korea. As historians have noted, the ensuing intellectual and social
ferment of the 1920s marked a seminal period in modern Korean history.
Many developments of the period, including the organization of labor
unions and other social and economic movements, had continuing influence
into the postliberation period. In the 1930s, however, the ascendancy of
the military in Japanese politics reversed the change. Particularly
after 1937, when Japan launched the Second SinoJapanese War (1937-45)
against China, the colonial government decided on a policy of mobilizing
the entire country for the cause of the war. Not only was the economy
reorganized onto a war footing, but the Koreans were to be totally
assimilated as Japanese. The government also began to enlist Korean
youths in the Japanese army as volunteers in 1938, and as conscripts in
1943. Worship at Shinto shrines became mandatory, and every attempt at
preserving Korean identity was discouraged.
The Korean economy also underwent significant change. Japan's initial
colonial policy was to increase agricultural production in Korea to meet
Japan's growing need for rice. Japan had also begun to build large-scale
industries in Korea in the 1930s as part of the empire-wide program of
economic self-sufficiency and war preparation. Between 1939 and 1941,
the manufacturing sector represented 29 percent of Korea's total
economic production. The primary industries--agriculture, fishing, and
forestry--occupied only 49.6 percent of total economic production during
that period, in contrast to having provided 84.6 percent of total
production between 1910 and 1912.
The economic development taking place under Japanese rule, however,
brought little benefit to the Koreans. Virtually all industries were
owned either by Japan-based corporations or by Japanese corporations in
Korea. As of 1942, Korean capital constituted only 1.5 percent of the
total capital invested in Korean industries. Korean entrepreneurs were
charged interest rates 25 percent higher than their Japanese
counterparts, so it was difficult for Korean enterprises to emerge. More
and more farmland was taken over by the Japanese, and an increasing
proportion of Korean farmers either became sharecroppers or migrated to
Japan or Manchuria. As greater quantities of Korean rice were exported
to Japan, per capita consumption of rice among the Koreans declined;
between 1932 and 1936, per capita consumption of rice declined to half
the level consumed between 1912 and 1916. Although the government
imported coarse grains from Manchuria to augment the Korean food supply,
per capita consumption of food grains in 1944 was 35 percent below that
of 1912 to 1916.
Under Japanese rule, intellectual influences different from
traditional Buddhist, Confucianist, and shamanistic beliefs flooded the
country. Western-style painting was introduced, and literary trends,
even among writers who emphasized themes of social protest and national
independence, tended to follow Japanese and European models,
particularly those developed during the late nineteenth and early
twentieth centuries. The works of Russian, German, French, British,
American, and Japanese authors were read by the more educated Koreans,
and Korean writers increasingly adopted Western ideas and literary
forms. Social and political themes were prominent.
Tears of Blood
,
the first of the "new novels," published by Yi In-jik in
serial form in a magazine in 1906, stressed the need for social reform
and cultural enlightenment, following Western and Japanese models. Yi
Kwang-su's
The Heartless
, published in 1917, stressed the need
for mass education, Western science, and the repudiation of the old
family and social system. Ch'ae Man-sik's
Ready Made Life
,
published in 1934, protested the injustices of colonial society.
In the 1920s and 1930s, socialist ideas began to influence the
development of literature. In 1925 left-wing artists, rejecting the
romanticism of many contemporary writers, established the Korean
Proletarian Artists' Federation, which continued until it was suppressed
by Japanese authorities in 1935. One of the best representatives of this
group was Yi Ki-yong, whose 1936 novel
Home
tells of the misery
of villagers under Japanese rule and the efforts of the protagonist, a
student, to organize them. Poets during the colonial period included Yi
Sang-hwa, Kim So-wol, and Han Yong-un. But the beginning of the Second
Sino-Japanese War marked a period of unprecedented repression in the
cultural sphere by Japanese authorities, which continued until Korea's
liberation in 1945.
From the late 1930s until 1945, the colonial government pursued a
policy of assimilation whose primary goal was to force the Koreans to
speak Japanese and to consider themselves Japanese subjects. In 1937 the
Japanese governor general ordered that all instruction in Korean schools
be in Japanese and that students not be allowed to speak Korean either
inside or outside of school. In 1939 another decree
"encouraged" Koreans to adopt Japanese names, and by the
following year it was reported that 84 percent of all Korean families
had done so. During the war years Korean-language newspapers and
magazines were shut down. Belief in the divinity of the Japanese emperor
was encouraged, and Shinto shrines were built throughout the country.
Had Japanese rule not ended in 1945, the fate of indigenous Korean
language, culture, and religious practices would have been extremely
uncertain.
Japanese rule was harsh, particularly after the Japanese militarists
began their expansionist drive in the 1930s. Internal Korean resistance,
however, virtually ceased in the 1930s as the police and the military
gendarmes imposed strict surveillance over all people suspected of
subversive inclinations and meted out severe punishment against
recalcitrants. Most Koreans opted to pay lip service to the colonial
government. Others actively collaborated with the Japanese. The
treatment of collaborators became a sensitive and sometimes violent
issue during the years immediately following liberation.
Source:
U.S. Library of Congress
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